Saturday, February 14, 2015

I'm just gonna quit apologizing for constantly being too tired to finish my blogposts and post them; cause let's face it, I'm not going to get any better at that. The short summary to start off for all of you who are too tired/bored/late for something to read the whole blog: visits to Rapid City were made, more music events visited, bacon and cookies were eaten, Vikings was watched and snow was hated. Now for the in-depth tour:

Thursday:

This Thursday we didn't really do much. We fed the horses in the morning and then loaded a bunch of steel onto a trailer to take to the recycling plant in Rapid City (well to be honest, I wasn't much help with loading the steel- I'm 1,62 m tall and have the upper body strength of a five year old- not a good combination if your goal is to lift 150 pounds of steel pipe onto a trailer. I was more of a mental help, you know *cough*). We got done with the steel at around noon, ate lunch at a Mexican restaurant. I don't know what it is with Mexican food, but I stuff myself by accident every time. Basically I didn't feel too good afterwards and was glad to sleep on the drive back home. We visited an antique store on our way home, I've never seen so much stuff in one room. It was very impressive, there wasn't a lot of stuff I'd personally want to buy, but it was fun to walk through. And that was the whole day (well we watered an fed all of the animals again and had dinner, but we do that every day, so I'm not going to mention it every time).

Friday:

Again, a very slow day. We didn't have too much to do so I caught up with my emails and such and at night we went to a Gymnastics meet for one of the girls and to Dairy Queen afterwards. I must say, I remembered DQ strictly as an ice cream place, but apparently they also have loads of other food. Who knew? (Probably everyone but me, but whatever).

Saturday:

Off to Rapid City we go (again). This time it was due to the auditions the kids had for an All-State Band. We waited a few hours for all three of them to finish up and at around two pm we were starving. What do you do when you're starving? Visit IHOP of course. I must admit that this was my first ever visit to IHOP. I know, crazy right? But I'd just never gotten around to it when I lived in Michigan. Being there for the first time, the obvious choice of food would of course be pancakes, but it was the afternoon and I wanted something hearty. So I went for pasta. Weird I know, and I have to go there again for the pancakes, but when I'm really hungry, I just don't feel like breakfast, which is my least favorite meal of the day anyway. It had been cold and foggy all day, but the temperature continued to drop and the fog literally froze as soon as it hit the ground. I've never seen anything like it before I must say. It didn't look it but the roads were dangerous. On our way home we drove past about 10 accidents, it was crazy. The roads were so icy it took us three hours to get home, we went that slowly. It was seriously crazy.

Sunday:

We got to sleep in!!! Whoohoo!! Well, we slept until 7:30 am. For us, that's sleeping in. I don't know what to think about that fact to be honest, but that's the way it is. I'm like an old lady, I get nervous when I'm not in bed by 7 pm because when you get up at six am every day, every hour of sleep counts. We had a wonderful breakfast of bacon and waffles (yum!). Feeding the horses was a blast, considering it was -18 degrees C and it felt like -30 and yes, there was snow on the ground. Yes, that sentence was meant as an ironic comment, I was freezing my butt off. Considering all that, we spent the day inside, had fajitas for dinner and went to bed as early as possible.

This is my bed by the way...interesting I know, but seeing as this week was quite uneventful I figured I might as well show you :)

Monday:

The ground was still covered in snow on Monday, the cold prevailing as well. We did brave the weather in the morning to stack wood according to its size and usage, and seeing as the sun was shining it was actually quite fun. When we got inside we warmed up in the living room and the show Vikings was on. At first I was like "too gory" and didn't pay it too much attention, but after one episode you totally get into it and we were all hooked. Basically we watched all two seasons in one day (Season three is airing this February- ahh). It's seriously good, if you like historical dramas and good-looking guys in Viking clothes. I mean, yes, they're all covered in blood every five minutes because they have to pillage and plunder, but it's so awesome! And if that wasn't a pretty chill Monday already, we also ate some pretty awesome Peanut butter chocolate chip cookies (Yes, I got the recipe and yes, I will make it as soon as I get back home).

Tuesday:

It was another musical day for us this Tuesday. Both girls had a performance at a college with their high school band so we had to be done with all of our evening chores by three pm because we had an hour and a half drive to get there. So we didn't do anything except for chores that day and got to sit in on the concert at night. The snow had melted (yay) but it was still freezing cold. The wind seriously makes all the difference here, as soon as it picks up it feels like it's ten degrees colder. For dinner we had Subway, which was nice because they don't have meatball marinara sandwiches in Germany.

Wednesday:

Wakey wakey....at five am. Oh jolly good. It was a gorgeous day but freezing cold. Our host "mom" had a doctors appointment bright and early, hence the five am wake up call. We spent the morning at Starbucks which was very enjoyable. I had a Chai Tea Latte and a Caramel Macchiato (I think). I don't really remember what the coffee I had was called. I also wanted a bagel but they were out (pout here). Afterwards we went to the Stock Show at the Civic Center. It was basically a huge Exposition of all things western. From blinged-out cowgirl belts to cattle guards and twenty foot horse trailers, you could buy just about anything. They also had a lot of cattle and steers, they did bull competitions ( the top stud bull sold for something like 35,000$ or something) and this was also the place where the rodeos took place. We spent a few amicable hours there and then drove on home. It was a lot of fun to just walk around and look at all of the stuff there. Again it was freezing cold, but seeing as we were indoors for most of the day anyway it was ok.

I do believe this marks the end of Week 3 ladies and gentlemen. Next week is going to be great. Prepare yourself mentally for rodeos and gorgeous sunrises (amongst other exciting things), so basically, I promise there will be more pictures in next weeks blogpost.

At this point I'd just like to say thank you to everyone who reads my blog. I don't know how many you are, but even if it's just a few people, thank you for taking the time out of your day to read what I wrote.

See you soon,

xoxo

Laura

P.S. It has come to my attention (*cough* thanks mom), that I have been making some massive spelling mistakes and grammatical errors...I would like to formally apologize for this (it's all autocorrect's fault of course). I'll try to do better next time :)

Thursday, February 12, 2015

I'm just going to get straight into it without much of an intro, but for everyone who doesn't feel like reading my novel-esque blogposts ( The word "esque" is currently one of my favorites... can you tell?) here's a quick summary: We cleaned some horse stuff, did more chores, visited Rapid City a couple of times, ate great food and went sight-seeing. If you wanna know what we saw, read the post :P

Thursday

Thursday was quite a cold day, so we spent it in the basement cleaning halters and brushes. It was quite interesting to see a halter which you could've sworn was grey, turn pink. We also cleaned up the garage a little bit, got pick-up driving lessons (so much fun, but you have to be careful when going through the gate while feeding so that you don't knock the sidemirrors off. I might've tapped against the gate once already...or twice..don't judge me, I'm not a ba driver I swear). Other than that we got to meet the horses "in person", stroking them and getting to know their herd behavior. It's so interesting seeing them interact with one another, I think I could spend an entire day just watching them. You learn so much just through the way they react to each other. For dinner we had potatoe soup and some of the best biscuits I've ever had. Seeing as I don't have any particular pictures of today, look at this little chihuaha; his ears just kill me!

Friday:

Our first Friday was very quiet. We didn't have a lot to do so we raked some of the "poop piles" up for the bobcat ( a machine, not the animal) to spread out and visited Hot Springs (the nearest town) to pick up some fruit and vegetable baskets at night. I also skyped with my boyfriend for the first time. It's a very surreal feeling skyping someone you're so close to. You feel as though you're with them because you can see their face and their reaction to what you say, but you can't touch them to give them a (light) punch or anything like that. Basically, the 3D part is missing. I'm not sure whether or not I like it...It shows one how very far away one is from another and that makes me sad. I guess this is a good time to talk about homesickness while I'm at it. Do I sound completely cold-hearted when I say I'm not homesick? I miss my family and my little Molly (my dog) and my boyfriend very much, but I mean, I'm going to be gone until June, and there is nothing that will change that, so what's the point in moaning, right? Is that horrible?Saturday:

I skyped with my parents, brother and dog on Saturday. I had to get up at five am, but it was worth it. It was so much fun seeing them all...poor mommy, alone with two men (well, one and a half men). My dog is very much ignoring me, apparantly she sneaks into my room sometimes and causes as much mayhem as possible. She is not amused that I abandoned her like I did. I take this in the most flattering way and say that she misses me. We also drove into Rapid again to watch the youngest daughter of our host family perform in a music contest. I think I haven't mentioned this yet, but Rapid is about an hours drive away from where we live...but that's not very far, thinking in US standards, and one gets used to the car drive very quickly. One hour passes very fast. Usually.

Sunday:

We visited the Mammoth Museum in Hot Springs on Sunday. The museum is actually an excavation site where they still do digs, so it is still active, which I find very cool. The center of the museum is an old sinkhole where the mammoths died in, thousands of years ago. They've already found over 60 skeletons and have about 40 more feet down to excavate. Very cool, I must say. It was also very windy that day. And if one says it was very windy in South Dakota...trust me, that's very windy. Chicago is nothing against the wind here. If there's no wind here you better not jinx it by saying something stupid like "yay, no wind today" (trust me, been there, done that), because the wind hears it and goes "whoops, my bad, here you go: whooooooosh". Great job wind, thanks buddy.

My Jaw compared to that one of a Mammoth. Well let's face it, my HEAD compared to the Jaw of a Mammoth

I'm even smaller than the tiniest baby Mammoth...short people problems....

Monday:

Crazy Horse Memorial. Great, great day. It was very warm, a sweater was enough to keep one nice and toasty and the sun was great. Not a cloud in the sky. I'd already been to Crazy Horse Mountain a few years ago, but they've added onto the museum and let's face it, it's always worth the trip. Seeing as it's the winter here, there's not a lot of basically no tourists, so we almost had the place to ourselves. It was very nice. We spent some of our time just sitting on the deck there looking at the mountain and chatting with the sun warming our backs. Seeing as I am generally fascinated by the Native American Culture and their way of life, and I've already had my fair share of papers and presentations on Crazy Horse, I can only recommend to everyone who visits South Dakota to go there. It's such a fascinating place to learn about Native American History and such. The thing that impresses me most is the Quote by Crazy Horse when he was once asked where his lands are now ( being faced with life on the Reservation) and he pointed to the Black Hills and said "My lands are where my dead lie buried".

Tuesday:

The most beautiful January day I've ever had the pleasure of experiencing. Over 19°C which is like over 60°F, not a cloud in the sky....just plain gorgeous. Coincidentally also my boyfriends birthday, which was very nice, even though I was very sad not to be there to celebrate with him. We stained the library upstairs that day, which was loads of fun. I almost had a whole bucket of mahogany stain dumped on my head (thanks Lea ;) ) because I am very short and so I had the task of painting the parts closest to the ground and Lea (the tallest) stood on the scaffolding painting the ceiling and well...she sort of forgot she had the paint bucket in her other hand. Missed me by like an inch, although my jeans caught their fair share, I now have a brown stain on my right knee which I fear I might get to keep for a while, cause it won't wash off. It was loads of fun though, so it's all good. Tuesday was also the first day I got to throw the hay off of the flatbed pick-up, which made me feel very good about myself. I'm such a big girl :P

We got Hay delivered today, so we locked the little dogs in the Pick-up; otherwise they would've gotten flattened by the HUGE (and by huge I mean, Transformers-huge) Tractor.

Wednesday:

We finished staining those parts in the library which we could reach without putting ourselves in serious danger (I could've hung off the ladder a little more...but it's only our second week, better not risk falling and breaking every bone in my body). We also waxed the hardwood floors in the parlor and hall. Wednesday was so windy we actually couldn't feed until about eight am because the wind would've blown the hay and alfalfa all over the place, so there was no point and we had to wait. I have to say, I love working outside. Even though it gets pretty chilly and windy most of the time it gives me satisfaction to do physical work, see a result at the end of the day and to know that I've done some excercise one could almost say.

Let's see, what was also worth mentioning this week:
- Eggplant parmesian....delicious, and I usually don't like eggplant, but man that was good!
- We're starting to feel more at home in our little basement room, it's definitely helped now that it's nice and warm with the space heater
- The adorable doggies that I've forgot to mention so far. There's three in total. Tessa Mae, an australian sheep dog, Mojo a dachshund/chihuahah ( I don't think I've spelled that wrong but it's almost ten pm and I wanna go to bed - shoot me) and little Koda, a chihuahah. He is so small I can pick him up with one hand and his massive overbite makes him even cuter. They are all massive cuddlers which is nice, it helps a lot with missing Molly.

I think that's it for Week 2 guys. Thanks for reading, hopefully I haven't bored you to death... if so: BOO!! WAKE UP I'm done now :D